According to study, birds exposed to constant noise from oil and gas operations show physiological signs of chronic stress, and in some cases, have chicks whose growth is stunted.
In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that adults and nestlings of three species showed multiple signs of chronic stress caused by noise pollution, including skewed stress hormone levels, possibly due to increased anxiety, distraction, and hypervigilance.
The study is the first to test the relationships between noise, stress hormones, and fitness in animals that breed in natural areas with unrelenting, human-made noise.
“In what we consider to be the most integrated study of the effects of noise pollution on birds to date, we found that it can significantly impact both their stress hormones and their fitness,” said lead author Nathan Kleist, who conducted the research while at the University of Colorado-Boulder and graduated with a PhD in evolutionary biology in May. “Surprisingly, we also found that the species we assumed to be most tolerant to noise had the most negative effects.”
Constant noise could be acting as an “acoustic blanket,” muffling the audio cues birds rely on to detect predators, competitors, and their own species, said study co-author Rob Guralnick, associate curator of biodiversity informatics at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Unable to discern whether their environment is safe, mother birds must choose between staying on guard at the nest and finding food for their young.
Nestlings in the noisiest environments had smaller body sizes and reduced feather development, potentially diminishing their odds of survival. Hatching rates in Western Bluebirds — the most noise-tolerant species studied — dropped in response to noise.
“These birds can’t escape this noise. It’s persistent, and it completely screws up their ability to get cues from the environment,” Guralnick said. “They’re perpetually stressed because they can’t figure out what’s going on. Just as constant stress tends to degrade many aspects of a person’s health, this ultimately has a whole cascade of effects on their physiological health and fitness.”
Previous research has shown that some bird species opt to leave noisy areas. But the new study shows what happens to those that remain.
For the Western Bluebird, previously suspected to be resilient to noise, the reduced hatching rates are concerning, said senior author Clinton Francis, an assistant professor of biological sciences at California Polytechnic State University.
“This is an example of an ‘ecological trap’ — when an organism develops a preference for something that is actually bad for them,” he said.
None of the species studied are endangered. But the researchers suspect that if other species experience similar effects in noisy areas, avian populations could decline as human-caused noise increases.
Stress levels tested in three species
A research team led by Kleist set up 240 nesting boxes staggered at precise distances from gas compressors on Bureau of Land Management property in New Mexico. This allowed the researchers to examine stress responses of nesting birds across a measurable gradient of noise, Guralnick said.
The team tested levels of the stress hormone corticosterone in three species – Western Bluebird, Mountain Bluebird, and Ash-throated Flycatcher. Expecting corticosterone levels to be high, the researchers found the opposite: The louder the noise from gas compressors, the lower the birds’ baseline corticosterone levels. These results were consistent in adults and chicks across all three species.
While initially surprising, the findings came into focus when compared with lab studies of chronic stress. Low corticosterone can be a sign that stress is so intense, the body has dialed down the baseline levels of the hormone as a means of self-protection.
“On the surface, you might look at this result and assume this means they are not stressed,” said Christopher Lowry, study co-author and stress physiologist at CU Boulder. “But what we are learning from both human and rodent research is that with inescapable stressors, including post-traumatic stress disorder in humans, stress hormones are often chronically low.”
When testing chicks’ response to a sudden threat, researchers found that the birds’ corticosterone skyrocketed compared with typical high-stress levels and was slow to return to baseline levels. The link between low baseline corticosterone levels and abnormal spikes in acute stressor-triggered corticosterone also parallels previous chronic stress studies on human and rodents, Guralnick said.
“This is a neat alignment between two entirely different types of literature — studies about stress and studies about conservation and physiology,” he said. “The connection between these low- and high-hormone levels helps explain why data on corticosterone from previous conservation physiology studies seemed to be all over the place. This helps illuminate the underlying pattern and suggests a new paradigm for how noise affects wildlife.”
Noise levels at natural gas fields are not unusually loud compared with human-made noise in many other parts of the country, which has important implications for protecting wildlife and possibly human health, the researchers said.
“This study shows that noise pollution reduces animal habitat and directly influences their fitness and ultimately their numbers,” Guralnick said. “By doing so, it makes it harder for animals to survive. Taken together, that’s a pretty damning picture of what human-made noise can do to natural populations of animals.”
A 10-decibel increase in noise above natural levels can shrink animals’ listening area by 90 percent, the researchers said. In the U.S., the amount of land area characterized by this moderate noise increase is an estimated 301,532 square miles — greater than the size of Texas.
“Hearing is the universal surveillance system across vertebrates, including humans,” said Francis. “Hearing is also the sense that remains active even during sleep and other instances of unconsciousness. Because we and other animals rely on hearing in these capacities, it may not be too much of a stretch to expect similar physiological impacts on humans.”
